Today's Word: Sparkle

From One Word

Superficial club paint...body stars to make yourself shine when the lights pass over you. You are a constellation of one, a heavenly body, rolling in the denizens' peripheral visions like a goddess in the nightclub

Deep End of the Emotion

It's not my best. I regretted it the moment I posted it. Not too proud of myself today. Blah.

Awoke at 5 a.m. on the boomerang snap-back of a bad dream involving shadowy figures hunting me and then segued right into a panic attack about my novel's ending, again raking myself over the coals for thinking that it wasn't original enough. It's like the Kevin Bacon game inside my head, I can eventually track any idea I come up with to something else. I become a purveyor of used intellectual property, a literary Dumpster diver.

And then my little freak-out in the late morning when I discovered that a word I was so proud of creating exists in Googlespace. There's a part of me that demands I create new words (you know, be the next inventor of the next "cyberspace"), and if I can't I don't deserve to be walking around. Yeah, my pressure on myself is that severe.

And it's all crippling, or it tries to be, forcing me to not write this, posting hurdles in front of me. If I can't be creative, I shouldn't do anything. If a word comes up that's not "mine," I'm worthless. Spiral down. Hide in the caves of my self esteem. Fun for everyone in my house.

My wife has stepped up to say, just write it, and, slapped into my senses, I'm struggling upwards again, as you do when you are deep underwater. The light from above is this shimmering disc with wavy concentric circles abounding with sleepy curves. You struggle to go up and up, swallow the air to last in your lungs just a while longer. Your arms and legs ache for fresh air and you can only hope you time it right to break through the surface, face baptized in the cool air, water flicking off you in droplettes as you crane your head back to suck in bucketfuls of oxygen.

And then when you do get air...when you are out of the underwater cave, your limbs turn to lead. You're weak and tired and exhausted from the stressors you put yourself under. You can't believe how many times you put yourself under like that. You think the pain in your arms and the regret in your heart, burning with like beads of molten glass that run down your throat....damnit, you'd think you'd know better.

But then be grateful. You're back in action. You're not the Incredible Sulk anymore.

P.S. I'm developing an aggressive allergy to hype these days. Currently, I have a Type 4 reaction to all things Harry Potter, and a Type 2 to The Hulk. I expect it to replaced next week with a medium-grade infection to the newly discovered strain "Charlicus Angelicus Sequelitis."

P.P.S. Song of the Day: "Into Your Arms," by Nick Cave. In the immortal words of Scott Bateman, it rocks all sorts of ass, yo.